UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Cushing, Jonathan
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2011
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
The romantic "peasant poet" John Clare (1793-1864) is often portrayed as either a victim of barbarous social policies in nineteenth-century Britain or as a notable, yet poor relation of his rough contemporaries, such as William Wordsworth. The result is that Clare's unique biography is either strongly foregrounded, in the case of political readings, or curiously suppressed, particularly when critics focus on the merits of his "asylum" lyrics. In this project, I attempt to position Clare at the center of both romantic-era and twentieth-century theories of aesthetics and language. My purpose in doing so is not to countermand the political marginality of Clare, but to show how, as an outlier of debates within the field of aesthetics, his poetry and prose writings may shed light upon how that field has historically been constituted. Specifically, I argue that Clare adopts certain elements germane to a conventional notion of "Taste," in spite of his exclusion from the middle-class.
The result is that Clare strips "Taste" of its class-leveraging nature while retaining its ethical and aesthetic powers. By reading numerous early poems and autobiographical fragments-made necessary by the near non-existence of scholarly work on the subject-I attempt to reconstruct Clare's novel conception of "Taste," while comparing it with more mainstream definitions of the term, such as those of Immanuel Kant and Pierre Bourdieu. In doing so, I argue that when Clare's theory oftaste is examined closely, it may help to underscore the self-reflexive, democratic, and ethical dimensions of taste, as opposed to the class-interested, hierarchical dimensions. In addition to this interjection on behalf of Clare, I also look into how "Taste" facilitates and enriches his approach to poetry.
Taste is enmeshed with Clare's relationship to the natural world and plays an essential role in helping to mediate it. Clare is both receptive to the facts of this world (in what Arthur Symons calls his tendency to "enumerate") and wary that this passivity might turn into a dumb, unreflective mode of experience. His method of correcting the automatic nature of his enumerations is through the power of "Taste." Thus, I end the thesis by putting forth a version of Clare who is capable of both naivete and nostalgia towards agrarian life, and an honest measuring of the damages of modern capitalism.
The result is that Clare strips "Taste" of its class-leveraging nature while retaining its ethical and aesthetic powers. By reading numerous early poems and autobiographical fragments-made necessary by the near non-existence of scholarly work on the subject-I attempt to reconstruct Clare's novel conception of "Taste," while comparing it with more mainstream definitions of the term, such as those of Immanuel Kant and Pierre Bourdieu. In doing so, I argue that when Clare's theory oftaste is examined closely, it may help to underscore the self-reflexive, democratic, and ethical dimensions of taste, as opposed to the class-interested, hierarchical dimensions. In addition to this interjection on behalf of Clare, I also look into how "Taste" facilitates and enriches his approach to poetry.
Taste is enmeshed with Clare's relationship to the natural world and plays an essential role in helping to mediate it. Clare is both receptive to the facts of this world (in what Arthur Symons calls his tendency to "enumerate") and wary that this passivity might turn into a dumb, unreflective mode of experience. His method of correcting the automatic nature of his enumerations is through the power of "Taste." Thus, I end the thesis by putting forth a version of Clare who is capable of both naivete and nostalgia towards agrarian life, and an honest measuring of the damages of modern capitalism.